ECE News Story

ECE Team Creates New Wireless Device to Monitor ER Patients

ECE Team Creates New Wireless Device to Monitor ER Patients

David Crawford '09, an undergraduate ECE student at the University of Maryland, and a 2002 ECE alumna are in the news for helping to develop a prototype wireless device that efficiently monitors emergency room patients' vital signs. The students won second place and the Entrepreneurial Vision Award at the Spirit of Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development (SEED) competition in Santa Barbara, Ca., held March 2-3, 2007. The team was also recently featured on CNN and in The Baltimore Examiner for their invention.

The students' device is a small, portable, wireless, wearable vital signs device that would help monitor patients in emergency waiting rooms. Currently, the average patient's wait time in American hospitals is 222 minutes. The system could send an alert to ER nurses or doctors if the vital signs showed something was seriously wrong with the patient.

The prototype is not yet on the market, but the ECE inventors, who both participated in the University of Maryland's Hinman CEOs program, plan to continue to develop and market the device. The students have been advised by James V. Green, director of the University of Maryland's Hinman CEOs program, and Karen Thornton, former director of the program, and current director of the new Hillman Entrepreneurs Program.